By Sean Kosofsky
What is going on with the Roman Catholic Church? Cardinal Adam Maida, who leads the Archdiocese of Detroit, is turning seventy-five, which means he is required to jump ship and submit his resignation. The Pope is expected to not accept the resignation and keep him on, wreaking havoc on fair-minded citizens of Michigan.
For those of you unfamiliar with Maida's record on GLBT issues, let me just say that he has become the single largest funder and advocate of anti-gay campaigns in Michigan history. While presiding over a million Catholics in Michigan, he has gone from silent and unapproachable to recklessly wicked and unapproachable.
I have never seen so many people leave the Roman Catholic Church as I have in the past six months. This happened because Maida and the Michigan Catholic Conference slammed the door in the face of gay couples. Each Diocese in Michigan donated a combined total of nearly a million dollars to pass Proposal 2, the anti-marriage constitutional amendment. How can they rationalize this while shutting down schools and churches due to a lack of funds? It's as if Maida is saying, "We are just so broke. We can't afford schooling or services for the poor, but we do have a secret stash of money for the sole purpose of locking gay couples out of health insurance, hospital visitation and emergency medical decisions for their loved ones."
Maida also single-handedly blocked the Michigan Catholic Conference from endorsing pro-GLBT hate crime legislation in Michigan back in 1998. Maida has also responded with deafening silence to numerous requests to meet from the GLBT community. He has ignored every request, run away from any opportunities for discussion, and waged a fantastically financed campaign to blame skyrocketing divorce rates on queers.
Sound like leadership and compassion? It sounds more like arrogance, bigotry and hypocrisy. That is Maida's Touch.
Let me also state that I am a recovering Catholic myself. I say that tongue-in-cheek but I left the Catholic Church in order to stay alive. I struggled with my sexual orientation since I was nine. By the time I was fourteen I needed to find a way out of the Church. I felt it was telling me I was crap. I left the Church because I instinctively knew I was worth more than they said I was. I almost took my own life on two separate occasions and consider myself lucky. Countless others have killed themselves because their faith tradition shoved them into the closet and blamed the problems of society on them. It is pathetic and angers me just thinking about it.
For those of you who are mad that I am taking aim at Cardinal Maida, stop being so defensive. Catholics who support equality and justice need to stop apologizing for the Church's mistakes and start demanding change. We have a responsibility to challenge so-called "moral leaders" when they claim that discrimination and bias are simply age-old "values." They are not tradition, they are relics. They should be tossed in the trash and traded in for new, bright and shiny traditions based on love, fairness and inclusion.
Maybe when Cardinal Maida and the Roman Catholic Church start catching up with the times they will find the flock they lost so steadily over the years. The problem isn't with their faith or religion, it is the way it touches its members and society at large. Far from being gentle, Maida has an iron grip. And you can't shake hands with a clenched fist. Maida should just resign. Not because he is old, but because he is out of touch.
